Officials with the United States Postal Service are looking to bring a third post office back to Hartland, Vermont — in some form, anyway.

Later this month, a representative with the Postal Service will be holding a public meeting to solicit possible sites for a retail postal facility to replace the one in Hartland Four Corners that closed in late 2015.

The part-time post office on Route 12 was closed because of several safety and sanitation issues in the leased building. There are two other post offices in the town of 3,400 residents, one at the Three Corners intersection on Route 5, a little more than a mile away, and one in North Hartland, also on Route 5.

Kurtis Bullard, a real estate specialist with the USPS, said this week the meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 20 at Damon Hall is intended to initiate conversations with Hartland residents about potential locations.

“This starts the community process,” Bullard said from his office in Greensboro, N.C. “We are coming up to see what might be available. Anyone with a piece of property can submit an offer to the post office.” Read more.

(Photo: Google Street View of former post office in Harland Four Corners, VT)

The fight appears over to save the neighborhood post office in Rio Nido, Calif., after U.S. Postal Regulatory Commissioners have deadlocked on closure last June of the century-old post office on Rio Nido Road.

A deadline this week may mark the end of a Rio Nido community appeal of the sudden shutdown when postal officials said the tiny post office was a consistent money-loser, locked the doors and moved operations to Guerneville.

Last month, U.S. Postal Regulatory Commissioners were split in a 2-2 vote over the merits of a neighborhood protest of the closing. The deadlock means Rio Nido loses and the U.S. Postal Service wins in its decision unless Rio Nido residents take some new legal action before a Oct. 27 deadline.

“My clients still have some remedies,” said Occidental attorney Joe Baxter, who filed the protest petition on behalf of the Friends of Rio Nido and the Rio Nido Neighborhood Association. “They’re considering their options.”

The deadlocked postal commission vote indicated support for Rio Nido’s argument that their local post office provided the “sole source of mail delivery” for approximately 1,000 Rio Nido postal customers who don’t get carrier delivery to their residences and instead rely on the local post office to get mail, buy stamps and send letters.

However, postal officials contended that providing home delivery to Rio Nido would be too costly and otherwise problematic owing to Rio Nido’s substandard and flood-prone narrow winding roads.

But two Postal Regulatory Commissioners disagreed, saying the postal service has failed to make a convincing argument why it can’t simply deliver mail to Rio Nido postal customers the same way it serves the rest of the lower Russian River — by having carriers put mail in stand-alone curbside mailboxes or “cluster box units” installed in a convenient neighborhood location. Read more.

thesomervilletimes.com: The historic Union Square Post Office building in Somerville, MA, will soon be home to RightHand Robotics, a local technology company that grew out of a team of researchers from Harvard, Yale and MIT.

RightHand Robotics is a leader in end-to-end solutions that reduce the cost of e-commerce order-fulfillment across industries, bringing the latest technological developments from the lab to the warehousing industry….

The Union Square Post Office was bought in 2014 by Union Square Partners LLC, which is run by Don Law, president of Live Nation New England. A designated Local Historic District, the building is a protected landmark dating from 1935 and is listed on the National Historic Register. Read more.

(As reported in a Boston Globe article about the sale back in 2014, the Somerville post office building contains a mural by Ross Moffett, a popular artist who lived in Provincetown. “His 1937 mural, ‘A Skirmish Between British and Colonists Near Somerville in Revolutionary Times,” depicting a clash that helped ignite the Revolutionary War, still graces the wall of the post office in Somerville’s Union Square.”

When the sale of the post office was first announced, Mr. Law promised to preserve the painting, and according to preservation covenants on post offices, New Deal murals are supposed to be available for public viewing. Yesterday’s article in the Somerville Times says nothing about what kind of access the public will have to the painting.)

The Fall 2017 newsletter from Communities and Postal Workers United (CPWU) features articles on: The Postal service union warns of job cuts, service reductions at Charlotte rally; Richmond post office workers walk off job after working without AC; Seattle & Portland Also Rally Against Cuts; USPS cancels most planned service cuts in Bronx; DC March against Unsafe Delivery in the Dark. Read the newsletter here.

The Times-Tribune: The United States Postal Service will hold a public meeting next month about its plan to move the post office from the William J. Nealon Federal Building in downtown Scranton to an as-yet-undetermined, smaller location nearby, a postal official said Friday.

The post office at the Federal Building, 235 N. Washington Ave. at Linden Street, has about 10,000 square feet of space, which is too large for current needs, said David Wolff, a USPS retail estate specialist leading the search for a new spot.

The USPS will look for a new location that has about 1,500 square feet of space, and which is within an approximate 1-mile radius of 235 N. Washington Ave., Wolff said.

“This is strictly for the downtown area,” Wolff said. “If we find a (suitable) place right across the street, we’d move there.”

The original portion of the Federal Building containing the post office was built in 1930. The building was turned over to the U.S. General Services Administration in 1981, when the USPS moved its Scranton headquarters to a new location in South Side. Read more.

lakeexpo.com: If the City Of Laurie’s post office returns, it won’t be in 2017.

At the Tuesday, Oct. 10 Laurie Board of Aldermen meeting, Laurie City Clerk Ron Clarke presented an update on the progress of the re-opening of the Laurie Post Office.

The United States Postal Service closed the Laurie Contract Postal Unit (CPU) in January 2017, after an agreement for an expired CPU contract failed to be negotiated by Bryant’s Osage Outdoors. Post Office Manager James Bryant said the income from the post office did not cover the expenses.

A moratorium on opening any new CPUs, issued by the United Postal Workers Union, ended in July 2017. A second moratorium was then placed into effect until September 2017. A third moratorium on the opening of any new CPUs sunsets on Sunday, Dec. 31, 2017.

Clarke reported that Laurie Mayor Allen Kimberling has written letters to U.S. Senators Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill and U.S. Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler and each of their offices contacted the USPS on behalf of the city. A conference call was also held with Mayor Kimberling and a representative from both Hartzler’s office and the USPS to discuss the city’s post office dilemma.

Clarke also reported that Gravois Mills Postmaster Pam Payne has asked permission to move the Laurie post office boxes from the Gravois Mills Post Office to the Laurie Terrace Mall. The move would only give the citizens of Laurie the ability to pick up their mail from post office boxes at the Laurie Mall. This would not include a full-retail post office at this time. If the USPS approves the move, build-outs would be necessary for security.

At this time, then final word is the USPS is saying that no new CPUs will be authorized until 2018. Read more.